Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post great content regularly to automatically begin attracting new web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We explain how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing as you start publishing new content on your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business becoming increasingly more competitive, it’s worth learning about every advantage available to get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to describe the main difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is additional work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this point here is a little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Things are going fine in the gizmo manufacturing plant when all of a sudden, everything just stops.
No one can figure out what went wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and, without uttering a word, goes immediately to the control box. After staring silently at the schematics for about 3 minutes, the expert then produces a little hammer from his shirt pocket and makes a gentle tap near the top-right corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything in the workshop begins working as before.
The manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Feeling furious, the manager picks up the phone and calls the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for having invested years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While the solution to many challenges often seems quite easy once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to get desired results
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure things will function as expected, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a solution, configuring some settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of different components such as your server, your website, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we were to create a simplified diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your webhosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your site can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites and/or online solutions.
External Services
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all of your content should be published to a central location (your site) and from there, it will automatically get syndicated to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external services have been added to your traffic network, content pointing back to your site gets automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social networks, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and business will then receive exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some external sites and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with essential data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account has been set up, this information can be used with traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account and site data, you can add traffic monitoring code to all of your pages in WordPress via plugins and feed data automatically to various other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site details with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, you can use the account information with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress provides users with a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking accounts set up in order to configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and attract new visitors to your site.
Set up accounts and profiles with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse page.
There are many different solutions that can be incorporated into your web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, only one service is listed …
(WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section …
(WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to notify the list of update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your content, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s post permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using WordPress permalinks here: Changing Your WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your sites.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and botnets.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to index, it also lets you specify how to present your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with others can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing features to your site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to choose which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring Settings – Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to configure your settings and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other Features Of WordPress
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with all legal requirements.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
If you need help understanding the importance of having a compliant website, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s categories and tags should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits.
Site Map
A visitor site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Only search engine bots can read XML sitemaps. Although Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong URL or click on an invalid hyperlink, they will normally be presented with an error page …
(A 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do is add content regularly to automatically start generating new traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web professionals months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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